Hello Brendan, hello all,
User of Bento for years (and although still working, it won’t probably last ? and anyway no more improvements for long).
So I just started on TapForms ? ? ??
After having done some bases patterned on my Bentos ones, I would like to build a budget monitoring and so, would be able to get automatically the balance after each operation (or group of operations): as a simple example, within a form that tracks all the money ins and outs of a single bank account, each record being one single operation (in or out) ; and more tricky, between several forms, each for one bank account.
I think that would need to make calculations between records of the same form, or between forms … so is it possible, and eventually how ?
Sorry if it’s a dummy’s question … ? (and probably I don’t understand enough about the calculation field, but although having struggling with it, I still don’t figure how to manage, and even if possible …
thanks
Hi Brendan,
I was probably one of the last “Bentohicans” until a few months ago.
I have been looking for a good replacement for Bento for a long time.
I doubted about Filemaker but that seemed too much for me.
I often ended up at Tap Forms but remained hesitant mainly because it lacked one function, namely the syncronization with contacts. It was convenient that contact information you entered in Bento, automatically appeared in the contact app.
In the end I switched to Tap Forms and I still have no regrets. The link to contacts makes things good and Tapforms has many more functionalities that saves me time.
Notwithstanding it would be nice if this function could be added in the future.
What is also a feature request is whether it is possible that a link to a document could immediately open the document instead of the finder window. These are gratuitous actions; Click to open the window, click on the document in finder, click to close finder, …
Otherwise nothing but praise for your program.
Erik
In Bento they were called Choice Fields.
If you imported from Bento, then Tap Forms would have converted the Choice Fields to be Text Fields with an attached Pick List.
On the multi-column list view, do you see a popup button you can click on to see a list of values? If so, then you have a Pick List assigned to those fields.
You’ll have to set the Pick List property on the field itself to be Unspecified in order to remove that. Then the auto-complete should work.
What is a Pick List ?
I used Bento and made the transfer over about 2 months ago, everything went smooth.
The only issue I have is the auto fill.
I am 75 and I just do basic computer stuff BUT I can follow directions fairly well, LLOL
Greg
Is there a way to display the Photo Grid with more than one title under it? I use it for tracking my graphic design work and each piece has a unique number and a title that I would like to see in the photo grid view. At the moment I can only see one or the other. Bento did this and it was one of the reasons I liked it so much.
For security reasons I don’t trust any cloud providers, therefore I use my own MAC server with permanent IP address.Apache CouchDB is the best and secure option for sync Tap Forms what I’ve ever seen. My largest database >2GB for several months sync with no problems between all devices. My system contains of 5 Mac computers and many IOS devices(large family). For sync other files I use Owncloud https://owncloud.org. Everything is installed on Mac Pro.
Gundars
Ex Filemaker,Ex Bento
Cheers :)
Oh! Excellent.
I’m experimenting using this in a Table
Table Field 1 [Amazon] – A full product URL (pasted in from browser)
i.e. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bento-1-0-Family-Pack-Mac/dp/B0012PJCTW/
Table Field 2 [ASIN] – A calc field to isolate ASIN
(SUBSTR( [Amazon] ; ( POS( ; “/dp/” ) + 3 ) ;
((LENGTH( [Amazon] ) – 1 ) – ( POS( [Amazon];
“/dp/” ) + 3 ) )
)
Table Field 3 [US Amazon] – A Web Site field (to see if product is also on other Amazons)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/******
If I manually put “B0012PJCTW” in place of ****** – it works! (of course)
But how do I reference the Table:ASIN field???
I wanted to post a recommendation on the App Store site, but discovered only those who purchased the software there can post there. So, am hoping those who are considering Tap Forms will find these comments here. Tap Forms is an awesome database with extraordinary customer support; nearly everyone will find countless ways to use its power. A lifetime Mac user, I used FileMaker in my small business for years. With its demise, I switched to Bento until it too faded away. I was delighted to find Tap Forms though somewhat skeptical that exporting my Bento files would be as easy as Tap Forms made it sound. But, the transfer worked well. I experienced a few wrinkles getting everything set up to meet my needs, but found most answers in the extensive online resources. Because I use Tap Forms for a pretty narrow application (to publish contact directories and to create mailing labels for various volunteer organizations) I’ve had some questions not addressed there; when I emailed developer Brendan, he was right there with the help I needed. And I mean “right there.” His thoughtful responses consistently came within an hour or so, often sooner. Amazing. Each time I use Tap Forms I appreciate it more. Looking over the many forms included with the software I am seeing several other databases I want to set up. I highly recommend Tap Forms and commend Brendan for his excellent work.
This is my first forum post …. ever!
I recently transferred my Bento data to Tap Forms app. Everything appears to have transferred over (fields and data) to Tap Forms except for my ‘home address’ field. The field shows up in the layout tap however the field doesn’t show up at all on each individual entry on my Tap Forms on my Mac laptop; the ‘home address’ fields do show up on Tap Forms on my mobile version.
Any feedback on how I get my Bento address field to show up on individual entries on my laptop?
Thanks!
Tapforms easily imports Bento Templates including all records. However, it does not import the Smart SubFolders based on set search criteria within Bento. Those smart folders can be recreated within TapForms, but is there any way to import the Smart subfolders, without having to manually recreate them? I have a large number of smart subfolders.
Hi Jim,
Here’s one I exported from Bento :)
Attachments:
You must be
logged in to view attached files.
I am moving from Bento to TF and there is one feature which I used a lot in Bento does not seem to be available in TF. It is about the way the “File Attachment” field works in TF.
I want to be able to find a music file on my Mac, do a ‘Show File in Finder’ option, find the file and drag the file to the “File Attachment” Field to create the file alias.
Once the file alias is created, I want to be able to click on the file and press space bar to open the file which is native to Mac.
How do I do this ?
Sameer
Hi Brenden,
I was away from my computer yesterday and will be most of today except for random moments. I haven’t any attachment to any particular function name myself. As long as there is something somewhere that explains what a function does, its return values and parameters then I am all good. I do prefer shorter to type in than longer names (str2int() instead of sting_to_integer(), but whatever.
Zeros are easy to type, I see no problem there, except maybe for the year 0 if there is someone doing historical work in the astronomical, Buddhist or Hindu calendars and needs/wants to record an event in the year zero. For all of us in the Gregorian calendar (or even Julian) there isn’t a year zero so no problem there for historians using TapForms.
I like the EOMONTH() with two parameters and the NEWDATE() and DATEVALUE() functions as you’ve proposed them. And with the DATEADD() they solve a very wide range of possible use cases really extending TapForms ability to work with date data. I like it lot.
I don’t actually think most people would want or care about ERA. My wife’s university studies involved a lot of old texts and the dates of source material is important. When she was a student she would have cared, but as an English teach that isn’t the kind of information she records in a database anymore. I would surmise that historians would care about ERA. So would archeologists, anthropologists and linguists depending on what they are studying. Students of these disciplines will have to deal with ERA sometimes as well. Whether or not they are organized enough and have the insight to put TapForms to work for them doing in their research and note taking. I suggested ERA only to make TapForms barrier-free for those people who might need it.
I briefly looked as the NSCalendar document you linked to and what jumped out immediately to me is the comparison options. I have not worked yet with TapForm 5 IF() but had found it very lacking in what I have wanted to do when I first moved to TapForms from Bento. Being able to auto-populate a field based on some logic or do some sort of entry validation based on logic really needs a good basic set of comparison operators and at least an IF() that is reasonably flexible with what it can do. In terms of date functions, since that is what we’ve been talking about, being able to test if a date is before, after or the same as another date and then be able to something would require ideally a case statement or at least a nestable if statement. I have not yet experimented with iIF(), ISEMPTY(), ISNOTEMPTY() or the logic operators in TapForms5 so I’ve no idea what their limitations are currently. I plan to do this as soon as I finish tweaking my current project form layout and figure a way to extract the data from a Circus Ponies Notebook export and get it into a form that I can import into my new TapForms form. My next project is going to revist one I had to give up on in TapForm 3.x due to limitations on table linking and then after that see if I can’t tweak the forms my wife use daily in her work to be more like the Bento from she used to use but lost some functionality moving to tapForms a couple years ago.
Also the ability to link up with Apple’s calendar(s) is interesting to me. I have a lot of data in multiple calendars that I have to input into the form I just designed but how I might go about wanting to link that up I have not given thought to yet. Reducing data input would certainly be nice. Searching one of more calendars for data mining would be nice too. After I get my other TapForm projects done I might revisit this idea and define just what my requirements and use case could/would be and then try to figure out how TapForms can or should be able to achieve it.
Hi Jose,
I didn’t know that I had been invited. I had to look back at what I recently posted and see I forgot to subscribe to your original thread so I missed it. I will accept it but I don’t know if I would be the ideal candidate.
~Chris
I would like print a formularside (form) with tables. But the tables are without data. I only see the table without data. Why that ?
I have import my Bento Database with tables.
Answers also in german :).
I use MAC OS HighSierra and MAC Tabforms 5.2
Greetings Ch-ack
I have a similar issue and tried to follow your instructions above but I can’t be doing it right as it didn’t work. To test this out, I created a new document and used the export/import Tap Forms Archive command to relocate the House Inventory Folder to this newly created form, but nothing happened?
I have successfully used the Bento Importer to migrate from Bento to TF 5 on my Mac. This has synced to my iPad but the folder has been placed into the ‘Samples Forms’ document. I would have preferred it to be placed into a new, dedicated document but due my initial ignorance of using Taps Forms, I did’t appreciate what was happening.
I now have my recipes (263 records with 30% containing images) sitting in the sample forms document and would appreciate guidance on how to move the folder to a new dedicated document. Please bear in mind I am a newby to Tap Forms.
Thanks, loving the app.
